LOS ANGELES BLOG: 26/3/18

The house we stayed in looked like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house.
We saw where Michael Jackson died.
Leo had an urgent bathroom moment outside Gucci in Beverly Hills.

ICONS
Los Angeles is iconic - thanks to movies, music, TV and a big sign.
It should have been New Jerseyland. The US’ fledgling film industry quit the east coast in 1910 due to licensing fees and awful weather ruining primitive moving image cameras.
A director tried filming in a village near sun-baked oil town LA and told his industry pals. The village had almost been called ‘Hauling Wood’ - but its founder edited its name to Hollywood.
By 1915, US movies made Brit Charlie Chaplin the most famous and well-paid person in the world.
The Beach Boys further popularised LA and California in the 1960s.
Baywatch – the most-watched US TV export – appealed to a new generation in the 1990s.
And the big sign helps. HOLLYWOODLAND's 40ft high letters were erected in 1923 to advertise as housing development. The last four letters were later scrapped.

LA IS COLD. REALLY.
But it's time to bust some LA myths.
The sea is cold. It's only bearable without a wetsuit in summer.
Most beaches have no surfers.
It’s not hot most of the year. Average maximum summer temperature as LA's main beach Santa Monica? 21C. London’s average is 22C. But LA does gets hotter inland, the area which also has mild 19C winters.
The traffic is not that bad. 10-lane freeways running right through the city (unlike London) mean driving is much faster than underground trains (unlike London).
Hollywood Boulevard is only four blocks of neon; the Oscars theatre is buried inside a shopping mall; and the only star we saw there was a meaty striped raccoon bigger than a fat cat.
Disneyland is five times smaller than Paris’ Disneyworld.

FRESH PRINCE & BAYWATCH
Some LA stereotypes are true.
It's massive. 20 San Franciscos would fit into LA’s 50×20 mile sprawl.
Hazy beach sunsets over lifeguard huts look like the Baywatch credits (minus Hoff/Pamela slow-mos).
Some houses really do look like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air set. I was waiting for Carlton and Big Phil to come down the sweeping staircase.
Some roads have 16 lanes.

They love sport. I counted 64 beach volleyball courts on just two beaches.
We skated the San Diego beach prom (Leo joined us in his pushchair); I played volleyball with spring break uni kids and basketball with Mexicanos; and we met one of the world’s top 20 ice hockey high school players training on the skate hockey pitch at our local park.

We hired a compact car but were given the smallest available – a $30,000 three-month old Chrysler 300 super-saloon so fat it was a struggle to squeeze into parking spaces.

In palm tree-lined Beverly Hills and the twisting Hollywood Hills, we see Jacko's house, where Britney Spears shaved her head, Tom Cruise’s old pad, David Beckham's mansion… and where the guy from Colombo lived.

Even the normal news is interesting. One day's LA Times newspaper business section alone contained: Facebook sold data to get Trump elected; US accesses travellers’ phone data via airport security scans; robot-driven car kills pedestrian; MGM chief executive quits.

And I almost spat out my sensational kettle popcorn when two 10ft dolphins leapt fully above breaking waves.

WE GOT OUR KICKS TO FINISH
On the last night of our three months in the USA, at Leo's insistence, we battled the cold to eat ice cream (Leo: “Ice, ice, I-C-E!”) on Santa Monica pier.
At my insistence, we danced to an electro-violin pop music busker.
At Nati’s insistence, we battled the gale to walk to the right to the end of the pier.
I'm glad we did.
It turns out the end of the pier is also one end of the legendary Route 66.
It neatly summed up LA: It all starts here.

SAN FRANCISCO BLOG: 18/3/18

San Francisco = new ideas.
From the Gold Rush to 1960s music, drugs, free speech and gay rights, to Silicon Valley's Google, Apple and Twitter generation, it happens here.

BEAUTY AND THE BAY
It's a beautiful city.
The Golden Gate Bridge frames skyscrapers next to cliffs, beaches and pin-prick kitesurfers – it’s up there with the world’s epic harbour views. New York, Sydney, Rio.
Perspective stuns as straight streets roll down hills almost to the horizon, flanked by immaculate wood-clad three-storey bay-window mansions.
100 sea lions bark beside a pier restaurant serving awesome clam chowder soup inside a bowl made of bread.
1,000-year-old giant redwood trees tower over lush gorges just north of town.
Little-known quadruple-span Bay Bridge’s night-time twinkles rival the Golden Gate vista.
And the world's biggest city park even has a herd of buffalo.

GOLD FEVER
I stand on the spot the Gold Rush began in 1848, as nuggets from the nearby Sierra Nevada were shown to a crowd.
I read the handwritten diary of the sawmill worker first to find gold: “Boys, I believe I may have found a gold mine.”
Possibly the biggest blunder in newspaper history followed. The editor visited the find location, didn’t pan water correctly and reported there was no gold.
£10billion-worth in today’s money was found in seven years.

With no law, San Francisco became the wildest of boomtowns.
California’s non-Indian population, 500 in 1848, rose to 300,000, via the overland route west, and by boat across disease-ridden Panama or round Cape Horn.
San Fran had hundreds of brothels. Ethanol and food colouring served up as wine. Murders every night. Runaway Australian convicts pillaging the city. Possees raised for vigilante justice.
Even women drugging men’s whisky with opium and selling them unconscious as sailors (victims woke up on boats bound for Asia). Not dissimilar to British Royal Navy's outrageous press gang recruiting tactics.

ALCATRAZ
On Alcatraz, we meet an ex-guard who worked with Frank Morris, played by Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz (three prisoners spend year using spoons to scrape concrete from air vents, leave paper mache heads in beds, climb from ventilation shaft, never seen again).
The guard’s verdict on the escapees? Drowned.
My verdict on visiting Alcatraz? Gripping.

CHOO CHOOS AND DING DINGS
No, not a shoe designer section (sorry, Nati).
San Francisco has every form of public transport imaginable. ‘Cable cars’ are old uphill trams. ‘Street cars’ are old flat trams. Muni is a new tram. So basically everything is a tram. Apart from Bart. That's a train.
Now you know why Leo has spent a week shouting ‘choo choo’ and ‘ding ding.’

THE CALIFORNIA WAY
Car accelerators and brakes must wear out fast here. In a grid-layout city, traffic lights or compulsory stops at every junction seem bonkers. Journey times would surely would be halved if one road had priority.

It sometimes rains every 10min. But it’s sometimes sunny enough for an end-of-winter Golden Gate vista picnic.

No wonder Yanks think the Brits are tight. 15-20% tips are standard, even from takeaway sandwich shops.

But we're learning the American way and the lingo.
“You're all set” = “Here’s your receipt.”
“In the back” = “Over there.”

And the popular “Right!” = “Yes!”
Probably what James Marshall exclaimed when he saw something glinting in the river on January 24, 1848, starting San Fran’s transformation from Mexican village to one of the world's great cities.

HAWAII BLOG: 11/3/18

Hijacking our 07-08 travel blog again to share this

HAWAII BLOG: 11/3/18

LIFE IN HAWAII

So far in 2018, we’ve survived a ballistic missile alert and being locked inside a volcano.

Welcome to life in Hawaii.

Living in Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, is a tourist fantasyland: Hundreds of gas flames shoot from head-high metal tubes on pavements (Tribute to beach fires lit by ancient Hawaiians to guide canoes); malls consist of New York designer stores plus giant trees; surf lessons cost $120.

But we're living like locals. We bought Hawaiians’ must-have accessory - a hammock. Nati made flower necklaces. I learnt to surf. Leo is learning the Shaka sign.

We’ve learnt life-work balance is in the right order here: Evening means 3pm onwards and it really is quite normal to play beach volleyball for three full days per week.

I do have a temporary office in our apartment. But it consists of an ironing board & stacked empty boxes of nappies, beer and cornflakes.

Priorities are different here. On New Year's Eve, Hawaii's main paper buried news 6000 homes will flood when sea levels rise, preferring a front page splash on tuna fish being cheap. (Raw tuna is the – surprisingly delicious - New Year meal here).

POLYNESIA & SUNSHINE

I love remote places. Hawaii is three-quarters of the way from Peru to New Zealand, and so far west that islands south of here are on the other side of the International Date Line.

Just when I was feeling chuffed to have visited the Polynesian Triangle’s three extremes (New Zealand, Easter Island, Hawaii), I found out Hawaii is actually in Oceania. Yes, the same continent as Australia. Then I was really pumped.

It’s year-round summer here.

But every Hawaiian island has the same extreme microclimate: West side dry (dusty river gorges), east side dripping wet (world’s wettest place is in Hawaii).

Rainfall is incredibly localised. The valley three miles from us is 10 times wetter than England. But it hardly ever rains in Waikiki.

And there’s snow right now on Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island. And don’t tell Edmund Hillary but it’s the tallest mountain in the world, measured from the seafloor.

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

Hawaii might be nervous about North Korea, but the islands will be destroyed by the ocean – eroded away, with nothing left above sea level in a few million years. It’s already happened to the other 200 volcanic islands in the chain which stretches to Alaska.

Unless a 500-metre high tsunami hits first.

There's no typo in that sentence. Underwater volcano collapses trigger mega-tsunamis. A 500-metre high one obliterated Hawaii's main island millions of years ago.

Hawaii’s islands - like most of Polynesia’s islands – were created by the Pacific Place plate moving north-west at 10cm a year, passing over a stationary hotspot in the earth's mantle, which bulged upwards to create 200 volcanic islands.

That’s why all Pacific Island chains run North-West to South-East. Cool hey?

CANOES & NATIVES

Asians paddled and later sailed canoes to settle Polynesia, arriving in Hawaii in two waves around 500 and 1000.

Captain Cook was the first European here, before being knifed in the back while kidnapping the island chief.

Apocalyptically, Hawaii’s native population - a million strong when Cook arrived – was reduced to 44,000 by European diseases in 100 years. 

The USA illegally grabbed Hawaii in 1898, about the same time it did similar to Cuba and Panama.

We went to Hawaii’s uplifting protest march on the 125th anniversary of the US takeover.

Hawaii has a 10% native population. They're in a better position than Aboriginals. They strive for the Maoris’ status in society.

FLOWERS & SHAKAS

This is a Hawaii blog so I’ve got to mention loud shirts, Mai Tai cocktails, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (singer with the most stunning voice who died from obesity), and Shaka gestures (a man lost his three middle fingers in sugar mill accident in 1960. When he waved, an iconic symbol was born).

Oh, and I forgot the stars. Hawaii’s amazing stars. The same stars that humans used to navigate to these beautiful islands in the first place.

PS The missile alert was a false alarm. And the guy from the volcano crater cafe unlocked the gates.